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Toronto Harbour is not the Caribbean — divers are more likely to be searching for guns or bodies than seahorses or coral. PC Patrick McLeod of the Marine Unit invites the Star to tag along on a training session.(Keith Beaty/Toronto Star)

He can still be heard breathing, thick and muffled, over the two-way radio on the dive boat — a bright orange case full of dials and knobs.

“Bubbles on the way,” Const. Peter Bazilsky radios to Const. Glen Abate, who’s in the water as he opens a valve to monitor the diver’s depth in Lake Ontario’s Trumpy Bay.

Dive team leader Const. Patrick McLeod is watching from the doorway of the boat’s cabin.

“Give him more line,” he shouts to the tender holding the diver’s umbilical — a series of tubes that carries compressed air and the radio communication.

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“They talk back all the time,” jokes Bazilsky, who is supervising the day’s dive training, when asked if the divers can respond.

This is the Toronto Police marine unit dive team. Stationed at the foot of the city, the marine unit is the only detachment with its own boathouse, where officers undergo rigorous training to uncover everything from sunken cars to guns to bodies — often the missing pieces that help close a case that would otherwise remain in the deeps.

Sometimes the calls for help are unexpected. The unit recently led the rescue of hundreds of stranded passengers when flood waters overcame a GO train bound for Richmond Hill.

But as development creeps up on the waterfront and technology improves, divers are better equipped to search for items that still end up at the bottom of the lake.

On a recent wet and miserable day, a small team is taking turns diving off the back of a boat in the 14-metre-deep water, testing their buoyancy around a ship wrecked below.

It takes several people to complete a successful and safe dive, especially in the summer, when visibility is low. Other boats can create chop, while the heat affects the algae. A slight brush that stirs up the lakes’ silt bottom — like “talcum powder” — can mean divers are swimming completely in the dark.

Const. Ricky Gomez is acting as Abate’s tender, feeding out the line he holds like a lasso. He also acts as Abate’s spotter, navigating him around the anchor line and instantly pointing out the diver’s location with an orange gloved hand when asked.

Gomez was part of a team that recently pulled the body of Kasandra Bolduc, a missing Elliot Lake woman, from the lake — after stumbling across a garbage bag floating in the water. The woman was one of 14 bodies the unit has pulled from the water already this year.

There aren’t a lot of happy stories out here in the lake, says McLeod, a tall, muscular man with broad shoulders who was diving 10 years ago when young Holly Jones’ body was pulled from the water.

“It’s going to wear on people’s minds,” he said. “On a good day you might have a few feet of visibility.”

A lot of hopefuls — those with 10 years’ experience on the force — try out for the marine unit. But even if they make it past multiple physical tests and interviews, when it comes to being asked to search for a dead body in the dark, not all can “get past the fear and do the job,” McLeod said.

Those who can, join this small family on the dive boat, where there is a washroom, music playing from the cabin and a small microwave on board — a loaf of plain bread sits partially eaten atop. There are currently seven operational divers and two in training.

Out here, they are looking for anything from sunken boats and cars — many actually pitched by their owners, who then fraudulently claim to their insurers that the car was stolen, McLeod says — to discarded weapons and murder victims.

In January, McLeod and his team discovered two cars, one reported stolen, that were sunk near the harbour wall. They were found while the team was testing a new side scan sonar — a device towed behind the boat that sends back images from the bottom of the lake.

McLeod said they will dive however long it takes to make a recovery — sometimes years.

They spent a month looking for Holly Jones, her small body finally discovered in two separate bags near the CNE and on Toronto Island.

As a unit, they pull 20 to 30 bodies out annually and dive 365 days a year, cutting holes in the ice when necessary. Divers wear vulcanized rubber dry suits, which they can layer-up underneath.

McLeod himself has become an expert on what the water does to a body. On his desk are photos the coroner recently sent him, seeking his expertise on Bolduc’s case.

Water can ruin evidence, skewing toxicology results that could tell investigators whether a person had drugs or alcohol in their system at the time of death. But forensic evidence can be recovered even a year later, McLeod said.

In Lake Ontario, there are no creatures that feed on human flesh, meaning the only enemies are water and time.

The marine unit works closely with homicide and divisional detectives to make these important discoveries, but there are also a few unexpected requests.

McLeod said they were recently contacted by the son of the famous Billy Bishop, who was also an aviator and was looking for help locating a jet and its pilot that crashed off the Scarborough Bluffs in the 1950s.

Now, technology has made the painstaking work the divers do more efficient in some cases.

Devices like the side scan sonar reduce wear and tear on divers, McLeod said, because they are able to locate an area of interest and dive down, instead of scouring the bottom for objects. Metal detectors are useless in the inner harbour, he said, which leaves divers searching the bottom with their hands.

But as condos and other development encroach on the waterfront, easy or conspicuous access points to the water are becoming closed off — a good thing for these guys tasked with recovery.

“There’s less stuff now than there used to be,” McLeod said about what’s left to find in the lake.

At the turn of the century, the lake was a dumping ground, he said. The 1970s to 1980s were a boon for stolen cars driven into the depths.

Then come the inevitable curiosities — the objects no one expects to ever find down there, like a samurai sword used during a robbery.

Once, one of the divers found a dead octopus that was thrown up onto the dive boat deck, catching everyone by surprise.

The theory is it came from a nearby grocery store, inexplicably sent to the deep like everything else down there.

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